


i'd rather be a comma than a full stop

by bettercrazythanboring



Category: Morning Glories
Genre: Gen, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-24
Updated: 2014-09-24
Packaged: 2018-02-18 14:57:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2352470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bettercrazythanboring/pseuds/bettercrazythanboring
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He scrambles up almost immediately, eyes jittering over you from below like a stunned puppy. "Zoe, you're <i>alive</i>," he gasps out.</p><p>You straighten tall, one eyebrow rising. "And who the fuck are <i>you</i>?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'd rather be a comma than a full stop

**Author's Note:**

> [Title.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyMhvkC3A84)

"Holy  _fuck_."

Something heavy shatters behind you. Skinny, bare arms wrap around your shoulders before you manage to not give a fuck about whatever it was, or the klutz responsible. Face twisting at the distinctly male-shaped body abruptly pressed to your back— _especially_  when his frail hands hastily cop a feel—you elbow him in the gut and whip around on one heel to collapse him to the floor with one sharp slap up his nose when he stumbles back.

The guy lands on the pile of blank papers and broken lemonade glasses he must have dropped; there's no muscle on him, nor any grace. His  _Space Something_  shirt rides up a soft abdomen. His hair reminds you of fireys from that one David Bowie movie, and that nose is nearly bulky enough to fit the image. You grimly wonder whether  _his_  head detaches, too.

He scrambles up almost immediately, eyes jittering over you from below like a stunned puppy. "Zoe, you're  _alive_ ," he gasps out.

You straighten tall, one eyebrow rising. "And who the fuck are  _you_?"

* * *

 

This is what you get for mixing business with pleasure. A nice vacation on the famous cusp of Africa—that's all you wanted. A few days drowning in colorful garments, a crash course on the usage of cumin in the kitchen, maybe a camel ride or two; is that too much to ask?

But no, suddenly two guys who couldn't keep their shit straight for a few fucking months are calling on you to fix their garbage undercover missions or something. All those glorious sunny beaches,  _wasted_  in the days you'd spent brainstorming with them about things you only marginally understand; even the vividest of dreams fade after a decade, after all.

You'd been so close to heading back to your parents and the mini-bar they'd paid for, so close when the man you'd had halfway convinced yourself was an imaginary friend had showed up and reeled you back in. All day long, nothing but boys with their screwups. For the  _entirety_  of this mid-semester vacation that you'd earned by getting accepted into one of the most prestigious prep schools in the country, even after all the shit you'd gone through in the last year.

Man, what a  _rip-off_. So much that you'd gone back to the safehouse on your last day in Morocco with the sole intention of handing Abraham an invoice for your services; maybe then you'd at least get to go on a shoe rampage back home and mend your bruised heart.

But now here you are, in the decidedly not-sunny office of some hag with fashion issues, being interrogated—with no good cop to set off the blood she periodically flashes under her nails, as if forgotten it was there.

"My, my," she says, circling your chair like a hyena. Her rosewood lips stretch over pearly teeth. "This certainly makes up for Mr. Gribbs' recent shortcomings, now, doesn't it? I barely expected him to come back with Abraham, let alone two of our kids… and  _you_."

Walid and Caleb had been taken down to a basement the moment they set foot on these grounds. You have no idea where Abraham went. A shower and a room assignment seem to be luxuries afforded only to you. "Thank you for recognizing my superior value," you say, gaze unflinching.

"Oh, no, don't misunderstand," Miss Daramount amends, sitting on the edge of her desk and delicately crossing her legs. "There's nothing special about you. You're of little use to me, really, as I suspect you won't be staying here long. If you'd gotten here just a bit earlier…" She wistfully looks over a pile of files next to her hand. "But I already made my bed and lay down on it. Oh, well."

"Then let me go," you offer, unimpressed. "If I'll be gone soon anyway, why not?"

She chuckles; the sound grates against your ears. "I said you're of  _little_  use, not none. Come, girl," she says, straightening primly. "There's something I want to show you. Something I think you'll be  _very_  interested in." It's not a request.

"Where are we going?" you ask in the hallway, heart inexplicably tumbling down the stairs of your ribcage.

The look she gives you is almost cheery. "There's a little room in our hospital wing we like the to call the  _morgue_."

* * *

 

"Uh…  _Hunter_ ," he says, brow furrowing. "You know, the guy you almost stabbed with a kitchen knife?"

One more look at him. "Mmm—no," you decide, as if there were another option. "I don't do knives. Or kitchens. Or babies like you." At his befuddled look, you add, "Better hope that glimpse of second base was worth the black eye, 'cause that's the only time you're ever coming near me, loser."

His upper lip tugs up in a grimace. "What; oh my god, not  _this_  again," he says, eyes cast to the ceiling. "For the last time, I'm not trying to  _get_  with you, Zoe! ...Not that you're not, like, worth getting with or whatever, romantically speaking," he amends, a quietly uncomfortable edge to his voice, "but you said it yourself—my crush on Casey is pathetic and all-consuming."

He stares at the hands dangling from his raised knees, as if everything else in the hall would blind him. Pathetic is  _right_.

And so you're not sure why, or how, or when, but the next words you cordially gift to the universe are, "And this  _Casey_  would be…?"

Hunter—what a  _supremely_  misplaced name—glances up. "You don't—? I mean..." His face twitches, as if he's just remembered how to add single digits. He pulls himself upright, not without difficulty; grains of glass rain down to the floor when he brushes the butt of his jeans. "I, uh. Okay, hold on, this is stupid, but I just gotta..." Holding a breath, he snaps his eyelids shut and sticks a finger out at her. It bumps softly into her arm; he cracks one eye open. "Okay. Um. Sorry." He blows out a breath. "Zoe, what  _happened_  to you? How are you here? How are you…"

"...Not  _dead_?" you guess, half of you hoping he'll snort and shrug it off. (Your other half doesn't feel much of anything at all.)

A heavy darkness washes over his downcast eyes. He still hasn't looked straight into yours even once. "Yeah. That."

You nod curtly. "They won't tell me, but I have this theory. There was a calendar in that harpy Daramount's office; it's June here?"

"U-Uh, yeah. End of it. ... _Why?_ " And he's sharper than you'd have thought to give him credit for because, as the words amble out, his gaze snaps to yours at last and promptly fills with muted, cold terror; his head slides backward until his chin is nearly indiscernible from his neck.

You put on your sweetest smile. "'Cause, see,  _I'm_  from mid-February. Got snatched up on Valentine's Day," you declare. "Not that I'm complaining, because, really, who wants a bunch of guys drooling over you all day and trying to slip you aphrodisiacs?" Your arms cross on their own, and it's only a little bit because the tips of your fingers have chilled so much you can barely even feel them there. "All that Casey drama or whatever is still ahead of me, is what I'm saying."

He exhales shakily, then, and goes back to looking at his feet. "Then that means… you're not really  _alive_ , are you?" His voice catches, just barely. "At the end of it all, you're still gonna—"

"Yep," you say as brightly as you can. "Unless I'm wrong and other freaky shit's going on, but the chances of that are miniscule. Of me being wrong, I mean," you add. The bones of your arms seem to have turned into icicles now. (Except instead of liquefying at your heat, they suck it away.) "Saw my body, too. Great stuff," you muse dryly. He doesn't say anything. "Bloody; just the way I like it." And without further delay: "So, you kill me?"

He jumps straight as if shot by lightning. "What? No." His expression sours. "...Do I look like a killer to you?"

The question doesn't sound rhetorical, but you ignore it. "Why  _else_  would I try to stab you? With a  _kitchen knife_ , or whatever it was."

"I dunno. We weren't exactly doing a whole lot of talking, to be perfectly honest." His hand flies to the back of his neck. "You killed my friend right in front of me. I ran. You followed. Said some shit about putting me off for as long as you could, and doing what you had to do." He stuffs both hands into pockets, shoulders hunched, and kicks an imaginary pebble.

"And?" you prompt. (You're basically terminal and  _he's_  the uncomfortable one? The  _nerve_.)

He shrugs. " _And_ , suddenly, you're dead and the girl who shot you shoots me too— _twice_ —but not really, and then even weirder stuff's happening, and later it turns out you've already killed, like, five people, and nobody ever  _explains_  anything. It's not really a story full of answers," he mutters. "Are you telling me you don't know either? I was really hoping you'd know. If I ever got to talk to you again."

"Dude, I've got no fucking clue who you even are, okay? They just told me to walk around the halls and see who bites." You abruptly feel like a snowman, all the way through. "Guess I should go back to doing that, biter. See you around, or something."

You turn on your heel and stride back the way you'd come, and maybe you're looking for a blanket, or maybe you're going to a nondescript place to throw up, or maybe you're trying to fall asleep on your feet in hopes that you'd later wake up in something other than a living nightmare, but you've barely finished navigating the glass field when he sighs and says, "Zoe, wait."

Good thing you didn't start crying. (Bad thing you don't feel the tears coming on at all, even though they should.)

He's standing seven feet away, one hand in a pocket, the other on his neck when you hesitantly turn around. His lips are squeezed tight—eyes even tighter.

"What? Spit it out; I don't have all day," you say when he's been utterly still for twenty heartbeats.  _You don't have much of anything_ , whispers the back of your head.

"I just…" He takes a step forward and exhales. His eyes return to yours, earnest. "I want to apologize," he says. "I know it might not mean much to you right now—or ever, maybe, I don't know—but I just need you to know that… I didn't mean it."

You wrap yourself more densely around your axis. "Didn't mean what?"

"I said some shit.  _Bad_  shit," he adds solemnly at your eyeroll. "And maybe if I hadn't, you wouldn't have joined our team, and you wouldn't have killed Maggie, and I wouldn't have seen it, and you wouldn't have died—since Irina basically admitted she only did it to keep me alive for some stupid ritual. M-Maybe you'd still be alive. For  _real_ ," he says, the liquid in his eyes tipping over without a single blink.

"That's a lot of stupid maybes."

His nose makes a sound. "Yeah, who knows. Maybe it was inevitable and would've happened differently anyway, I dunno, but either way, I'm just…" His hand twitches toward you; he curls it into a fist. "I'm  _sorry_ ," he says, and the sincerity in his eyes almost scares you. "I'm sorry for saying it, I'm sorry for not making it right while I still had the chance, and… I'm— I'm sorry that we didn't get a chance to say goodbye, or talk about whatever it was that you were doing, or figure something else out." His head sinks down. "I'm sorry you're dead because of me. And you're kind of amazing, in a strange way. And I miss you."

You nod along almost automatically, teeth gnawing on your lip. "Well, you're right; it doesn't really mean much to me." Except those promised tears are starting to crawl up your throat. "And you've done a jack shit job of convincing me you're not trying to get into my pants."

He chuckles, the first real smile blossoming on his face, no matter how small. "Yeah, I miss you," he whispers to himself, and looks back up. "Just, please, if you're right— If all the shit we went through is still ahead of you… Please remember that I didn't mean it," he says, "and that I regret it. ...And be careful. We had this class on realities a while ago; maybe there's one where you live."

* * *

 

And of those who bite, there is no one else memorable enough to mention.

No, you're more interested in those who  _don't_.

In an angry little girl playing god who carries a conversation with you for thirteen minutes before bothering to remember that you're supposed to be dead; who, in that time, hands out dozens of buttons and posters to anyone passing through, and manipulates them into believing that offering to do her errands was their idea. She's sweet and caring to them, and underneath it there's cold steel in her eyes, a ruthlessness that begs for the slightest provocation to come out.

In a sleek boy with ugly bruises on his cheek who takes one look at you, mutters, "Fuck off," and goes back in the other direction so quickly you'd almost mistake it for fear, if Abraham hadn't gotten drunk a few nights ago and told you all about his cocky little shit of a son and the family they've never been.

In a freckled disaster with ginger hair sticking out in every direction, who straightens when you sit across the lunch table like she's been waiting for it, and has nothing to say in the long silence that follows except questions about your kidnapping and where you've been. Nothing about you, just the paradox. Just this game of chess they're all playing.

In muscle personified, who doesn't even recognize you despite being on the list of people you're supposed to be dealing with, who would punch this whole goddamn place into  _rubble_  if unleashed. You see him sparring with a Zac Efron lookalike once, and a shiver runs through you; thank goodness he's still alive, because there's no way you'd go after murdering  _him_.

They still haven't cleared out your stuff from a room with ZANY ZOE written on the door board.

Little there that you wouldn't expect—magazines, clothes, your favorite eyeliner—but a note lies under your pillow, peppered with random letters and numbers, some crossed out, and you can't make any sense of it.

It only takes you two minutes of examining the room to figure out where you'd decide to stash your secrets; at least you still marginally know yourself. Or maybe not, you muse as your fingers close around the gun taped to the top of an open dresser drawer. It's simple, efficient. Old-fashioned but new, somehow. Your eyes close before checking how many rounds it still has, like you're afraid to find out.

And it's as if the universe was waiting for this precise moment two days after entering this place, because three minutes after you gingerly put the gun in your bag and stride out of this room without aim or purpose, strong arms close around your neck, and another pair lifts your ankles into the air, and you're carried, kicking and screaming, down four flights of stairs to a place much like the one you spent some of your childhood in.

The bed you're held down to is hard and uncomfortable, and the needle forced into your neck even more so.

The vivid darkness that follows, though… No, that feels like home and peace in a way the normal life never did.

 

 

 

 

 

"Well? What did you see when your eyes were opened, little girl?" the blonde right out of forties' movies asks when they flicker undone, a creepy grin plastered on her face. Her eyes sparkle with malice in this dim lighting. There's another syringe in her arm; a certainty washes over you that that one won't be nearly as pleasant.

You clear your hoarse throat weakly and reach for the water glass on the bedside table. " _Fuck you_ , bitch," you say after your hand dips down to the discarded bag on the floor, right before you aim that gun between her eyes and empty the entire clip.

* * *

 

" _There_  you are," a woman in a floral dress and mad curls says as she corners you into one of this school's many hidden courtyards. "I've been looking all over for you."

You lift the gun you haven't loosened your hold on for five hours. You've gotten  _really_  good at aiming it. "Stay the fuck back."

"Oh, would you stop it with that nonsense." She doesn't slow, not even for a moment. "I'm the one who  _gave_  you the fucking thing, and I counted the bullet holes in the basement."

The trigger snaps and the potted plant behind her crashes. You smirk. "I found more."

She surveys the damage over her shoulder. "Impressive, I'll give you that—" and keeps advancing, until she's close enough to take the weapon from your arms, which is exactly what she does, "—but we both know that didn't come from this gun, Zoe." She smiles, not without a degree of condescension. "I have to admit, even  _I_  didn't think you'd come into your powers that easily."

"Wh— Who are you?" Hunger and ice claw at your stomach. Maybe that's why you don't punch her in the throat and run. (Where would you, if you did?)

"Someone who believes you don't belong in this place," she says easily, a hand on her hip, "which makes me about the best damn friend you ever had right now. Come with me."

It's a pragmatic beckon, the wave of her hand; she doesn't wait for you to respond. And maybe it's because you're tired of pushing and being pushed, maybe because you don't want to run anymore, maybe because, deep down, she is so very familiar somehow, but you take a step after her. You follow five paces behind, eyes darting in every direction, follow all the way to the gates you don't catch her opening.

Your head feels fuzzy as you walk through the tunnels, and you don't remember putting on the hazmat suit, and then all of a sudden you're standing in a dark room with her and two other men, and it's night. She pats your shoulder and tells you to stay out of trouble, and, when she takes your face into her hand, catches your gaze, and whispers, sternly, "Now forget everything you saw here," you can't find it in yourself to begrudge her.

* * *

 

Ah, sweet home. You waltz into the dining room without fuss and sit down to a sizable helping of lasagna with ease, blouse still stained with bits of blood you write off as ketchup.

"Welcome back, Zoe," your father says before passing the pepper. "We were wondering where you'd disappeared to."

"Oh, you know me." You shrug. "Got stuck in the  _cutest_  little market off the beach. Had to catch a later flight."

Your parents exchange a glance you fail to regard as important. "Be more careful next time, honey," your mother says, before asking, "Did you, by any chance, meet up with Uncle Abraham?"

"Yeah," you say between scarfing down mouthfuls of food. "He sends his regards."

* * *

 

(Later, you'll tell a boy with a box in his hands that he doesn't seem like one with much to go home to. Later, you'll tell another that his crush is hopeless and ill-conceived, because it's aimed at a person who doesn't really exist. Later, you'll put off killing him, without a reason you can define beyond black fear pumping into your bloodstream at the very thought.)

(Later, you'll believe you're psychic, and use it to get under the skin of everyone orbiting in and out of the truths that formed as soon you entered that place again. Later, you'll fail to fathom how much  _deadlier_  your power truly is.)

 

 

(Later, you'll tell a drenched redheaded boy he doesn't need to worry about a boy he calls Jun, and you'll never get to find out how wrong you were.)


End file.
